September 08, 2009

Jamaica Kincaid Will Give 2009 Annual Anisfield-Wolf/SAGES Lecture

Internationally acclaimed author and garden writer Jamaica Kincaid launches this year's humanities theme of Culture of Green: Nature and the Environment—a discussion probing humanity's relationship to nature—presented by the Baker-Nord Center for Humanities at Case Western Reserve University.

Kincaid, author of My Garden (Book) and Autobiography of My Mother, will give the annual Anisfield-Wolf/SAGES Lecture at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, September 22, in Amasa Stone Chapel. The free, public event is presented by the humanities center, the Cleveland Public Library and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards®. Online registration is encouraged.

Prior to the lecture, the Baker Nord Center and the Cleveland Public Library will set the stage for Kincaid with a panel discussion at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, September 15, at the Cleveland Public Library's Martin Luther King Jr. Branch, 1962 Stokes Blvd. in University Circle.

During this public event, university faculty and staff will discuss Kincaid's work. Panelists will be Marilyn Sanders Mobley, vice president for inclusion, diversity and equal opportunity, and Erika Olbricht, a SAGES instructor. Mobley is a scholar of African-American literature and a Toni Morrison specialist. Olbricht earned a master's degree in historical gardens and landscape conservation from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and has been a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University in agrarian studies.

The two scholars will provide insights into how Kincaid writes about the topics of the sense of place, the colonial past and post-colonial present, and tragic familial relationships.

These two public events coincide with the annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Award ceremony and related events that recognize writing that promotes diversity and race relations.

About the author:

Born in Antigua as Elaine Potter Richardson, Kincaid left her home country to come to the United States as an au pair but eventually left that work to study photography at the New York School of Social Research. She also attended Franconia College in New Hampshire.

In her book, A Small Place, Kincaid recounts the cultural struggles Antigua underwent during its transition from British colonial to independent rule and her anger at the country's failures during this process.

Kincaid has been writing and sharing her thoughts with the public since she began to pen articles for Ingénue magazine in the 1970s. Later she wrote “Talk of the Town” articles for The New Yorker.

Case Western Reserve University is committed to the free exchange of ideas, reasoned debate and intellectual dialogue. Speakers and scholars with a diversity of opinions and perspectives are invited to the campus to provide the community with important points of view, some of which may be deemed controversial. The views and opinions of those invited to speak on the campus do not necessarily reflect the views of the university administration or any other segment of the university community.